ridiculous and contemptible as it was, yet it was ten times more like
a premeditated insurrection than the Derbyshire riot; yet an honest
Middlesex Jury, with Mr. Richardson, of the Lottery-office, as their
foreman, refused to find the instigators of it guilty of high treason.
This having been the case, the Ministers were determined to try their
hands at a trial for high treason in the country. It was, in fact,
necessary to bring forward at least some shadow of a pretext for the
infamous measures which had been passed by the Parliament, and for the
still worse conduct of the Secretary of State, who had thrown such
a number of the Reformers into dungeons, the secret dungeons of the
Boroughmongers, where they were lingering under the suspension of the
Habeas-Corpus Act, without any charge being brought against them, and
without being brought to trial, there being nothing to prove against
them. I repeat, that it was necessary to make a show, a pretence, a sort
of justification, for these proceedings; and the riot which had taken
place at Pentridge, in Derbyshire, was the thing fixed upon for that
purpose, as they could not trump up a better.

Brandreth, Turner, Ludlam, and thirty-five or six others, were
accordingly thrown into prison, and indicted for high treason. These
poor fellows, thus assailed and immured in a gaol, were without a friend
to protect them, and to see that they had a fair trial, and in fact were
without the means of paying counsel and witnesses, to enable them to
stand any chance of having a fair trial. In this forlorn and wretched
situation, their attention, as a _dernier resort_, was directed to _me_.
I was a perfect stranger to every one of them, but they had heard of
my exertions in the cause of the people, and they prevailed upon their
attorney, Mr. Wragg, of Belper, to write to me, and inform me of their
deplorable and forlorn situation, and to request that I would endeavour
to raise a public subscription, to enable them to fee counsel, and to